


Transcontinental, 1:30 a.m.

by Reishiin



Category: Yu-Gi-Oh! GX
Genre: Epistolary, Hanahaki Disease, Long-Distance Friendship, M/M, Possibly Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-15
Updated: 2019-05-15
Packaged: 2020-03-05 19:32:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,589
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18835288
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Reishiin/pseuds/Reishiin
Summary: Juudai's travelling the world, using his affinity with duel spirits to help people, and Johan has gotten very good at identifying flowers as of late.





	Transcontinental, 1:30 a.m.

**Author's Note:**

  * For [izayoi_no_mikoto](https://archiveofourown.org/users/izayoi_no_mikoto/gifts).



> Timeline notes: Assumes they both graduate in 2008, and that Juudai turns 18 that year and Johan 19 (due to how their birthdays fall in relation to the school year).  
> Title from the song by Vienna Teng. Thank you so much to [Moon_Blitz](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Moon_Blitz/) for betareading.

 

 

 

Midsummer in Oslo, the days are long and the sunsets late.

Weekday evenings at 7 p.m. Johan walks home from the bus stop with the setting sun in his eyes; Cobalt Eagle keeps up a leisurely pace, wings a rhythmic beat in the air by his side. This time of year, the bluebells and violet orchids are in full bloom, bright splashes of colour atop the low wall bordering the pavement.

Johan has gotten very good at identifying flowers as of late.

Something catches in Johan's throat and he steps aside so other pedestrians can pass, pulls a handkerchief from the inside pocket of his jacket to catch his cough. A couple, approaching, slows and regards him with concern. "Are you all right?" the woman asks.

"Ah, yeah, everything's fine," Johan says, waves to the trimmed shrubs. On Johan's shoulder, Cobalt's claws tighten in the fabric and one wing raps him smartly on the back. "Just allergies. Flowers, you know..."

It’s not a lie, not precisely. The woman nods in sympathy and they go on their way. Johan folds the handkerchief and tucks it back into his jacket pocket; he'll empty it out into the compost bin when he gets home.

 

 

 

**March, 2009**

The first flowers arrived with the spring, fragments of snowdrops and crocuses identical to the ones beginning to bloom by the front gate of Johan’s apartment complex. Neither the polyclinic nor the hospital manages to find anything wrong; everything about Johan's physiology comes up normal on the battery of blood tests and scans, aside from the fact that he coughs up flowers once every couple of days out of nowhere.

The buds are small and soft and relatively inoffensive, so Johan walks out of the hospital with yet another specialist referral and a box of throat lozenges, and pops into the next shop to buy a handkerchief to keep on hand.

His aunt, whom he visits once a year, says it's a curse. "Laid down sometime between the autumn and winter of last year," she says, peering through a monocle at the bud he hands her.

That was around the time he was on exchange at Duel Academia, Johan thinks, and asks, why is he only feeling the effects now?

His aunt replies, like it's obvious, that the flowers had lain dormant all through the winter and are only starting to grow now that the sun has returned.

 

 

 

> [04:07:34]  **Juudai:**  JOHAN  
>  [04:07:40]  **Juudai:**  why is daylight savings a THING
> 
> [06:35:58]  **Johan:**  oh true you didn’t have that back in japan  
>  [06:36:13]  **Johan:**  up here, in summer, the sun rises much earlier, so we turn the clock back to have more daylight in the day  
>  [06:36:35]  **Johan:**  ... did the timechange make you late for something?
> 
> [09:03:44]  **Juudai:**  ya  
>  [09:03:46]  **Juudai:**  lol

 

 

 

**April, 2009**

_Flowers?_ Austin O'Brien writes.  _Can't say I've noticed anything like that. But I'll ask around._

 _Not a big deal, don't worry_ , Johan replies. He hits send and closes out of his inbox, falls backwards onto his bed and stares up at his ceiling. Afternoon sun slants through the window and falls over his face, and he squints his eyes against the glare as Ruby's phantom weight settles on his chest.

Since parting ways at Duel Academia, the four of them—Jim Crocodile Cook, Austin O'Brien, Juudai Yuuki, and himself—still keep in touch. It's funny, but among the pioneers of Duel Academia's global exchange program, Jim Cook is the only one who went on to the Pro Leagues. O'Brien had followed his father into the military and joined a specialist dueling division, Johan himself had stayed on at North Academy as a junior tutor, and Juudai Yuuki—

Juudai's travelling the world, using his affinity with duel spirits to investigate mysteries and help people. Sometimes, he will even pluck time from his busy globetrotting schedule to reply in the group chat or send his friends a postcard.

By now, most of their mutual friends have figured out that if they need to tell Juudai something, it's easier to ask Johan to relay the message.

On the steamer back to the mainland the day he left Duel Academia, Johan got two notifications from Juudai: a Duel Network friend request, and an invitation to a correspondence match. The first has since grown into three different e-mail chains; the second is six months in, shows no sign of ending soon, and probably breaks at least three of the most recent tournament rulings but neither of them is counting.

Now Juudai writes him from all kinds of places—a hostel lounge, or somebody's car, or atop a mountain where there isn't even cell service. Juudai’s photos are rarely of himself, more often of his immediate surroundings, sometimes with Winged Kuriboh floating in a corner. Johan’s glad for them; it gives him glimpses into Juudai’s life he wouldn’t have otherwise.

In return, Johan writes about the changing seasons, and the flowers that bloom and wilt in the bed beside the gates to his apartment complex. Every quarter or so Industrial Illusions churns out new cards and mechanics, adjusts the official ban lists and restricted lists to match the current metagame, and shortly afterward the Kaiba Corporation develops duel disk programming to match.

> _... I've been talking to a local elementary school about starting an after-school dueling club. A lot of the casual players who apply to North Academy are surprised at how difficult the entrance exams are, and it might help if ..._
> 
>  seen that in DA too. shaky foundations from not learning properly starting out and it shows when they start playing competitively, by then it's a bit late, takes a lot more work to catch up

Johan’s wall clock shows ten past midnight, which means it’s evening in Chile. He wonders if Juudai is eating dinner, perhaps, or still working. Then he clicks reply and starts typing. Come morning he will regret not sleeping, but right now, there are still so many things he wants to tell Juudai.

 

 

 

 

> [20:06:44]  **Johan:**  Fubuki says thanks for the card you sent for Asuka's birthday.
> 
> [21:07:20]  **Juudai:**  haha  
>  [21:07:57]  **Juudai:**  trying to get a bit better at this keeping in touch thing
> 
> [21:09:25]  **Johan:**  c:  
>  [21:09:36]  **Johan:**  He says he wants one too.
> 
> [21:12:54]  **Juudai:**  tell him to ask his fangirls

 

 

 

 

**September, 2009**

Ida von Linné, the gardener at the elementary school, used to be a field botanist. Over many summer evenings after class has let out for the day, Johan brings her flower samples, and learns to categorize and identify them. She teaches him other things about flowers, too: their medicinal uses, decorative purposes, and cultural meanings. She tells him about Victorian flower symbolism, and then about hanakotoba. "Throughout history," she says, "flowers have been used to convey messages. They are the physical form of a person's feelings."

Back in Duel Academia, Rei Saotome had tried to give Juudai flowers, but they had only made Juudai sneeze. Morning glories, Johan remembers now: _love in vain_.

It occurs to Johan that Ida has never asked him where he gets his samples, even though some of these flowers cannot grow in the local climate.

That week O'Brien gets back to him, too, with a rumor of a rumor of a sickness called  _hanahaki_ , a disease that has the main symptom of spitting flowers. Just a myth, O'Brien says, and tells Johan not to put too much stock in it. That evening, Johan looks it up; his written Japanese is still middling at best, and he has to read slowly with a dictionary open in the next tab.  _Flower-spitting disease, born from one-sided __._

Cobalt Eagle croons a little, a tickling brush of feathers by Johan's ear, and it clicks in Johan's mind like the right solution to a duel puzzle: so obvious once he sees the connection, he can't believe he'd missed it before. He leans back in his chair and thinks he's been very stupid for not realizing. But he's smiling.

 

 

> [08:00:23]  **Juudai:**  she’s with Tanya now. hopefully being with her own kind and away from shitty humans helps  
>  [08:02:02]  **Juudai:** thing is i think i? shouldve done more? if id noticed the signs earlier, if id just been able to get through to her maybe she and that duelist wouldnt have. ended up like this  
>  [08:02:34]  **Juudai:**  idk  
>  [08:02:55]  **Juudai:** you’re better at this stuff than i am. what should i have done?  
>  —This message has been removed.—  
>  —This message has been removed.—  
>  [08:04:02]  **Juudai:**  sorry for unloading.
> 
>   
>  [08:10:05]  **Johan:**  You helped.  
>  [08:10:21]  **Johan** : You said it yourself, she was hurting. if you hadn’t been there she still might be
> 
> [08:12:15]  **Juudai:**  thanks, johan  
>  [08:12:42]  **Juudai:**  bit better now

 

 

**January, 2010**

Mid-winter, the sun sets at half-past three in the afternoon, and Johan’s neighborhood is a ghost town by 7 p.m. Johan doesn’t much like the total silence of an empty house in the long nights; it’s too much like being back in the Dark World, where time itself seems to stand still in a world without a sunrise.

When a ray of light impacts a gem, it does not reflect or transmit, but scatters. In Rainbow Dragon’s crystal cage there had been only reflections of Johan’s own face, fragmented as many times as there are surfaces on a cut diamond and distorted beyond all recognition. Beyond the hall of mirrors Johan had seen the Gem Beasts fighting, but separated by that crystal wall he could not call out to them, just as they could not call out to him.

The first and last thing Johan had heard in that place had been Juudai's voice calling out to him. The memory of that now reminds him that he is awake, for no dream could hope to mimic the sensation of thorns clawing their way up the inside of his ribcage.

The flowers go to sleep in the winter, but missing someone never really ends; it is not always visible, and not always noticeable, but it is always there.

 

 

 

 

 

> [19:00:01]  **Juudai:**  when you mail, put this address on the front and my domino city address on the back  
>  [19:00:15]  **Juudai:**  so if it misses me here, i’ll still get it  
>  [19:00:22]  **Juudai:**  uh, eventually
> 
> [19:15:40]  **Johan:** lol okay  
>  [19:15:46]  **Johan:** how often do you go home anyway
> 
> [19:15:53]  **Juudai:** ehhhhhhh  
>  [19:16:21]  **Juudai:** 1x in the last two yrs?

 

 

 

**July, 2010**

This far north, summer days are long and late. Now afternoon sun slants through the window, the low angle of it casting long shadows over Johan's writing desk; Topaz Tiger is curled up in a puddle of stagnant sunlight on the floor, dozing and thoroughly content.

The day Johan arrived at Duel Academia had been much like this one, the sky bright and cloudless blue above the horizon. Beneath the shimmering heat of midday sun, the distant island had seemed like a mirage that might disappear the moment Johan looked a little closer. At that time, Johan hadn't known there was someone at that school who could see duel spirits, too; who could match him in a duel, and still make him laugh through all of it.

Johan doesn't really believe in destiny, but he thinks that if he did, it would feel just like meeting Juudai Yuuki.

In the flowerbeds three stories down from Johan’s window, the orchids are in full bloom, vibrant violet and blue against a lush bed of green. Johan sets the pen down, clears his throat into the wastebasket under the desk: chicory, narrow pale petals damp and crumpled. Then he notices that blood has stained the writing paper, so he replaces it with a fresh sheet and starts again.

> _... the alpha release of Synchro Summoning dropped today and the kids are thrilled. They love the holo effects and they say it's much easier than fusion, too: no need to remember specific card combinations..._

Johan tells Juudai about many things, but he never mentions the flowers. Those are locked away in the part of himself otherwise reserved only for the Gem Beasts, more secret than secret and that no one in the world can touch. As long as their friendship remains this way, Juudai will never need to know.

At the end of the letter Johan adds the valediction, then puts the pen down and pushes the paper towards Ruby. "Want to sign, too?"

The little fox pushes an insubstantial paw onto the ink pad, then presses it equally insubstantially against the paper. To anyone else, the space next to Johan's signature looks blank. But Juudai will see it, Johan knows.

 

 

> [03:14:32]  **Juudai:**  the truck in front of us just crashed into a bridge holy cow  
>  [03:17:49]  **Juudai:**  we're ok, we're going around, nobody was hurt. the truck tho  
>  [03:18:10]  **Juudai:** [Img01.png]

 

 

 

**March, 2011**

_Don't your parents worry? About you just taking off like that?_

_Nah, not really,_  Juudai writes back. _I'm pretty independent and can take care of myself. Since I was young they let me make my own decisions._

Johan thinks about Juudai, five years old, designing a line of Duel Monster cards of his own; seven years old and dueling teenagers twice his age using a starter deck with Yubel as his only ace. It is lonely, Johan thinks, being a hero. Or maybe it's precisely because Juudai was always alone that he could become the hero that Duel Academia needed.

That smile, Johan thinks, is so precious precisely because it was once watered with tears.

Just as only Juudai could have traversed the twelve dimensions to fuse the fated card, so now, only Juudai can wield the Darkness of Justice to right the wrongs in the world. And even so, despite everything that has come to pass—he is still Johan's best friend, and a goofball who always forgets daylight savings and who ignores things like timezones to send Johan memes on Duel Links in the dead of night.

 

 

> [20:12:15]  **Johan:**  Sooooo the extra credit i set for duel strategy iii final  
>  [20:12:33]  **Johan:**  ‘ways to use a kuriboh or kuriboh variant to win in 2 turns’  
>  [20:12:45]  **Johan:**  [Img000.jpg]  
>  [20:12:51]  **Johan:**  [Img001.jpg]
> 
> [20:13:33]  **Juudai:** MAMMOTH GRAVEYARD  
>  [20:13:35]  **Juudai:** a classic
> 
> [20:13:40]  **Johan:**  [Img002.jpg]
> 
> [20:13:56]  **Juudai:** the kurivolt effect damage one is very good
> 
> [20:13:58]  **Johan:**  right??  
>  [20:14:10]  **Johan:**  faith in kids these days restored
> 
> [20:14:15]  **Juudai:** the tower one too  
>  [20:14:28]  **Juudai:** like i know it wouldn’t fly in tournament since realistic physics=off but points for originality

 

 

 

 

**June 2011**

Johan turns twenty-two in midsummer, when the evenings are long and mild and the orchid corner in the elementary school is bursting with color. Emerald Turtle jokes that now the kids at the elementary school will have to call him "Mister" Johan, instead of "big brother." A package from Juudai arrives in the mail: a silver pin inset with seven crystals in the color of the rainbow, a note attached.

> _A rainbow is the bridge between the spirit world and ours. May you always shine as brightly too._

Johan is absolutely sure Yubel had a hand in writing that. He's smiling anyway.

Some days, the dam breaks, and Johan has to call in late to work to cough up what seems like Ruby's weight in flowers before staggering out the door. Some days, missing Juudai is more painful than breathing.

Every account of hanahaki seems to indicate it’s eventually fatal. But the disease progression is not quite halfway, and Johan still has so many things to live for: the Gem Beasts who are always by his side, the elementary school dueling club, the developments in virtual reality that are giving duel monsters form and life in this dimension. One day, humans and duel spirits will be able to live together. That is what Johan had decided would be his life's work. Until that day comes, Johan thinks, he has no business dying.

 

 

 

 

**October, 2011**

The World Duel Carnival in Heartland City is the biggest tournament of the year, a gathering of the world's greatest duelists in one place to celebrate the city and showcase the very limits of AR Vision. Now Sapphire Pegasus flies laps around the stadium, keeping pace with somebody’s Galaxy-Eyes Photon Dragon, and Johan watches them circling in the sky through the half-transparent eyepiece of a loaner D-Gazer as he types.

> _Everyone's here. Jim Cook, the Manjoume brothers, even Edo Phoenix and the Broadway LDS crew.  Mr. Heartland really went all out. The biggest rollercoaster in town is shut down for the prelims, can you believe it?_

Jim Cook leans over, asks teasingly what's so interesting about Johan's phone he's missing the opening ceremony for it. In return Johan switches to camera mode, snaps a photo of the two of them in the duelists' section of the stands and sends that to Juudai, too.

By now most of the people Johan sees on a regular basis think he’s deathly sensitive to flowering plants, and Jim Cook doesn’t bat an eye when Johan fishes out the handkerchief and coughs lightly into it. “You okay there, Johan?”

“Yeah,” Johan says, and crumples the flower away into the handkerchief out of sight. “All good now.”

 

> [13:05:11]  **Johan:**  HEARTLAND HAS EGGWICHES  
>  [13:05:32]  **Johan:**  [Img000.jpg] **  
> ** [13:05:52]  **Johan:** eating an extra one for you

 

 

 

**February, 2012**

Winter in the northern hemisphere, the days are short and cold; Johan drags himself out of bed before dawn, and walks home in the dark with his face tucked into the turned-up collar of his coat, and the Gem Beasts would all rather sleep in his deck pouch than come out.

Since meeting Dr. Kogami in Heartland, Johan has split his time between North Academy and Den City, where the Kogami Lab is developing an add-in to the AR Vision system. Link Vrains, still a nascent prototype at this point, will one day allow duelists to enter the virtual reality space themselves and interact with their duel monsters directly. It’s everything Johan has dreamed of.

Returning from another fortnight-long trip always means Johan’s mailbox is stuffed with backdated post. Now he tosses out the junk mail and takes the remaining pieces upstairs, sorts it into to-do piles until he comes to the postcard from Juudai: golden pyramids against a sea of sand and a clear blue sky.

> _Cairo, 05-02-12._
> 
> _It was awesome._

Juudai's been off the grid for a while too, on invitation from the Ishtars to investigate a series of artifact disappearances in the area. He had mentioned wanting to visit the birthplace of Duel Monsters, and the final resting place of the former King of Games, on the way.

Outside Johan's bedroom window the winter night is an opaque black sea, frost spidering in intricate ferns over the glass. Johan watches his reflection: long-sleeved pajamas and a shock of messy hair, Ruby curled up in a dent in the blanket next to him. He imagines the burn of the desert sun, the grit of sand over skin; he can almost see Juudai's silhouette against the towering dunes, the tombkeepers silent by his side as he pays his last respects to the Pharaoh-without-a-name.

Even though Juudai travels to all these places, the photos section of his Duel Network profile remains empty. Juudai, Johan thinks, is one of those people who is much too busy living life to bother with documenting it. One day the only records left of Juudai's travels will be these postcards and Juudai's own memory of those places.

Johan himself has exactly one photo of Juudai, a selfie of the two of them on the Duel Academia roof on Johan’s last day, their arms slung round each other's shoulders as they grin into the phone camera. It's not a great photo: it's off-center and a little blurry, Juudai's hair is sticking up in the back, and they're both squinting from the sun. But Johan has had it on his phone lockscreen for three years anyway.

 

 

 

> [00:13:02]  **Juudai:**  johan, you there?
> 
> [06:14:13]  **Johan:**  Sorry, was sleeping  
>  [06:14:17]  **Johan:**  what up?
> 
> [09:13:02]  **Juudai:**  wanted your thoughts on a deck thing but don't worry now, i finished  
>  [09:13:24]  **Juudai:**  tell ruby winged kuriboh says hi  
>  [09:13:36]  **Juudai:**  [Img01.png]

 

 

 

**October, 2012**

The day Johan left Duel Academia for North Academy, Juudai hadn't said anything, just hugged Johan until the steamer's horn sounded in the distance.

It had been the first time Johan was reluctant to leave somewhere. Johan has always been good at letting go; it was easy to leave his hometown to board at North Academy, and easy to leave Northern Europe to do an exchange semester in Japan even though he had never left the country before. Home, to him, is just where the Gem Beasts are.

(After Duel Academia, he had amended that definition a little: Home, to him, is just where the Gem Beasts and Juudai Yuuki are.)

But Juudai had smiled at Johan then and told Johan to go before he'd be late, and ran with Johan all the way down to the pier dragging Johan's cases behind them. Juudai had waved from the docks as the steamer pulled away, and Johan hadn’t let him out of his sight until the island itself was a speck on the horizon.

This time of year, autumn’s chill is setting in, and Johan coughs up the last flowers of the season before putting his throat lozenges away. Now the migratory birds are flying south for the winter, and some days the flocks of them are so thick and numerous they even block out the sun. Year on year, they leave home and circumnavigate the globe in search of a place to rest.

Johan wonders if they ever think about settling somewhere.

 

 

> [11:13:56]  **Juudai:**  so i might be in your part of the world soon  
>  [11:14:33]  **Juudai:**  something abt livestock disappearing. don’t suppose you've heard anything?
> 
> [12:23:51]  **Johan:** Nope haven't heard. Not a lot of farms round these parts tho  
>  [12:24:54]  **Johan:**  Amethyst says look for gaps in the coop fencing.
> 
> [13:22:45]  **Juudai:**  ah, not chickens  
>  [13:23:19]  **Juudai:**  it’s cows?? disappearing ten at a time
> 
> [13:25:59]  **Johan:**  that is weeeeird. But you'll figure it out, I know it.
> 
> [14:16:45]  **Juudai:**  wanna grab tea afterward?
> 
> [15:01:13]  **Johan:**  sure, I know a place with good fried shrimp  
>  [15:01:25]  **Johan:**  let me know when you get here
> 
> [15:02:01]  **Juudai:** gotcha.

 

 

 

**March, 2013**

When the bus drops Johan and Ruby at the station by the café, Juudai is already there, one hand in his pocket and the other curled around his phone. He’s leaning against a lamppost, cutting a dashing figure against the street scene in the familiar jacket and long pants, a familiar cat-tail poking from his backpack and Winged Kuriboh hovering a little way behind him. Johan types out a text and hits send, and almost instantly Juudai catches sight of him and waves.

Closer up, Johan sees that Juudai has lost the last of the baby fat from his face; he's gained a few more centimetres, and they’re the same height now or close to it. Johan’s suddenly overcome with the overwhelming want to hug him, but before he can do anything too stupid Ruby leaps off his shoulder and tackles Winged Kuriboh to the ground, and Juudai’s face splits into a wide grin. For a moment, it’s like they’re back on the roof of Duel Academia again.

Juudai awkwardly scratches the back of his head. "Might've missed you, a bit."

"Me too," Johan says, and his face already hurts from smiling. He searches the space around Juudai for the second presence he can't see; nods a greeting to Yubel, then turns and leads the way inside.

At their table, something glints on Juudai's backpack as he sets it down: a silver pin with an inset crystal, deep blue. "That's new," Johan says.

"Reminded me of you, a bit."

"I'll be sure to give Amethyst Cat your regards," Johan laughs.

Even out of adolescence's growing pains, Juudai still helps himself to terrifying amounts of food. "Eating for two," he calls it now as he waits for Johan to help himself and then sweeps all three plates clean.

"So what did the cow-thief turn out to be?" Johan asks as Juudai carefully sets a small pile of the shrimp to one side for Pharaoh.

Instantly Juudai's head shoots up, eyes glittering. "You’re not gonna  _believe—"_

He launches headfirst into a story about an Odd-Eyes Dragon who had somehow jumped back ten years in time, circumnavigated the globe, and then proceeded to hide out for months in the Norrland terrain foraging food from nearby farms. "She had a Timegazer Magician friend who thought the past would be a good place to go on vacation. We managed to get her on her return flight, so to speak."

Johan leans back with his arms folded, but he's smiling. "The shining future of Duel Monsters is made of dragon punks crashing our barley fields. Good to know.”

"She said they have a thing called Solid Vision that uses energy-matter projection to make duel spirits become real. That's pretty neat, isn’t it? Maybe that's what becomes of your Link Vrains thing... Johan, are you sure you're okay?"

"Excuse me, bathroom," Johan says on autopilot, shoves his chair backward so hard he almost upends it and heads for the sign in the cafe's corner. Pushes open the bathroom door and braces himself over the sink, chokes, coughs, and spits out far too many petals into the basin. A whole white bud slowly unfurls in the sink; his throat burns and his eyes are streaming, and he can't tell if he's laughing or crying—

—because what is Johan supposed to do with himself when Juudai Yuuki is right here, still as radiant as the sun that had shone down on Duel Academia the day they met, telling Johan about a time-traveling cow-thieving dragon as casually as if he were talking about the weather? Most of the time, Johan thinks he’s good at rolling with the punches. But sometimes life decides to remind him that he is truly, deeply, unconscionably in love with his best friend, and that's a doozy, because he has  _no idea_  how he is going to make it through this afternoon alive.

It’s unfair, so unfair, that all this time all Johan has had are texts and scribbled postcards and one blurry photograph to remember Juudai Yuuki by. Now that Juudai is here, really here, with that hair that still flops in his face and still wearing that jacket though he’s three years out of school—Johan never wants to let him go again.

He closes his eyes and presses his forehead against the cool glass of the mirror, forces himself to breathe. His stomach cramps again and he leans over the sink again just in time to hear the creak of the bathroom door opening. "Johan? Are you oka—"

"... just... ate... something wrong," Johan manages, hoping the way he’s standing sufficiently blocks the mass of blue and purple petals in the sink as Juudai walks in. "Don't worry about it."

Juudai's eyes have gone wide and he’s definitely not looking at Johan, but past him. “Johan, this might sound strange but I know hanahaki when I see it. Also, why didn’t you say anything?”

“What would be the point? Anyway, it’s not a big deal. The flowers aren’t even halfway—“

“Give it time, it’s gonna be,” Juudai says quietly. Then, “This is because of me?”

 “Who else could there be? If there was anyone else, you’d already know.” Thoroughly busted, Johan grabs paper and starts cleaning out the sink.

“Sorry, just… have to make sure, you know?” Juudai says softly, shakes his head. "Still think you should’ve told me. C’mon. I’m going to show you something and then we are going to fix this.”

“Fix this?”

“In South Korea, there’s a surgery that will rip the flowers out by the roots and your feelings along with them… I’m just kidding, Johan. Let’s say I had to do research of my own and that hanahaki takes _a lot_ of different forms.”

Back at the table, Juudai tips Pharaoh out of his bag and then yanks open a zip on the side. A pile of small translucent spheres roll out onto the platform table, glimmering all seven colors of the rainbow in the sunlight that streams through the café window. “Do you know how  _downright weird_  it was to start puking these?”

Johan just stares. “Huh.” It’s quite a lot to take in.

Juudai is still talking. “I got held up at Turkish airport security for not paying customs or something, and then these two guys in the American Midwest tried to exorcise me because they thought I was possessed. Well, I am, but not in the way they think— Johan, please, say something.”

“If you don’t mind,” Johan says, “I am going to hug you now."

It’s a whopper of a glomp that knocks the breath clean out of Johan’s lungs and he still holds on to Juudai as tightly as he can; breathing is overrated, anyway. Juudai says into Johan’s shoulder, muffled but close enough to hear, “What I mean is. Believe me, you’re as important to me as I am important to you, got it?”

For the first time in five years, the thorns stop climbing the inside of his ribcage.

“Just like that?” Johan says, even though he already knows the answer.

“What can I say?” Juudai says, and turns and swats at air. “I’m magic. Also, you will not believe the amount of shit Yubel is giving me right now for this.”

 

 

Evening, catching up over drinks at a roadside café next to the train station. Opposite Johan, Juudai has put his legs up on a second chair and rocked back precariously in his own, forehead creased as he considers the cards on the duel mat between them. They both have iced drinks, and a slice of half-eaten cake sits to the side. Under the table, Ruby is napping with Winged Kuriboh, and the tips of Pharaoh’s ears peek from the top of Juudai’s bag.

The feeling of lightness in Johan’s chest is unfamiliar, as is the absence of Ruby’s weight from his shoulder. But the world always seems a little different when Juudai is in the picture.

“Where to next?” Johan asks, after Juudai has made his play.

“Italy again,” Juudai replies. “I’ve been to Venice like five times in the last two years.”

“Places to go and people to save, right?”

Juudai laughs. “To be honest, I wish I had a bit more time here. See the northern lights for myself and all. Weather’s nice, too.”

“Come back in September,” Johan says. “It’s prettiest then. Although you might have to deal with tourists who all want to do the same thing.”

Juudai glances sideways in the direction Johan mentally terms Yubel-space and says, “I mean, for longer than a couple days. I’ve been travelling for so long, I think I want to know what it’s like. To stay in one place and watch the world change.”

“Could crash on my couch for a couple weeks, if you wanted,” Johan says, and thinks he means forever.

“Might take you up on that,” Juudai replies.

They don't finish the duel because it's getting late and Juudai has to catch his train, but promise to continue online. By now the sky overhead has turned deep blue, the last vestiges of the day a glimmer of light over the horizon. “Hey, wanna get a picture?” Juudai asks.

“Sure,” Johan replies.

They wake Ruby and Kuriboh and head over to the fountain by the café; Juudai asks a couple of passing girls if they’ll take the photo, runs back over to Johan and throws an arm around his shoulder as the phone camera flashes. Juudai retrieves his phone, immediately sends Johan the photo. “Better than the old one for sure.”

On Johan’s phone screen in 8-megapixel resolution: the two of them and their duel spirits beside the fountain, pedestrians and rush hour traffic occupying both streets and the intersection behind them. In the background, the tall skyscrapers of the business district and the setting sun, the evening sky orange and yellow shading sharply to blue behind the city skyline.

In the distance, a train honks. Johan checks the time on his phone and yelps, and they pick up Juudai’s luggage and make a run for it. This time, Johan’s the one to dash on board just long enough to stow Juudai’s bags in the overhead compartment, and he hugs Juudai tightly one last time before stepping off onto the platform. There are tears in his eyes, but he’s smiling, and he doesn't stop waving until the train pulls away from the station and rounds the corner out of sight.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


End file.
